The Secret Power

"Dear Don Aloysius, how can I tell 'why'? Nobody is really happy, and I cannot expect to have what is denied to the whole world!"

Aloysius resumed his slow walk to and fro, and she kept quiet pace with him.

"Have you ever thought what happiness is?" he asked, then--"Have you ever felt it for a passing moment?"

"Yes"--she answered quickly--"But only at rare intervals--oh so rare!..."

"Poor little rich child!" he said, kindly--"Tell me some of those 'intervals'! Cannot they be repeated? Let us sit here"--and he moved towards a stone bench which fronted an ancient disused well in the middle square of the cloistered court,--a well round which a crimson passion-flower twined in a perfect arch of blossom--"What was the first 'interval'?"

He sat down, and the sunshine sent a dazzling ray on the silver crucifix he wore, giving it the gleam of a great jewel. Morgana took her seat beside him.

"Interval one!" he said, playfully--"What was this little lady's first experience of happiness? When she played with her dolls?"

"No, oh no!" cried Morgana, with sudden energy--"That was anything but happiness! I hated dolls!--abominable little effigies!"

Don Aloysius raised his eyebrows in surprise and amusement.

"Horrid little stuffed things of wood and wax and saw-dust!" continued Morgana, emphatically--"With great beads for eyes--or eyes made to look like beads--and red cheeks,--and red lips with a silly smile on them! Of course they are given to girl-children to encourage the 'maternal instinct' as it is called--to make them think of babies,--but I never had any 'maternal instinct'!--and real babies have always seemed to me as uninteresting as sham ones!"

"Dear child, you were a baby yourself once!"--said Aloysius gently.

A shadow swept over her face.

"Do you think I was?" she queried meditatively--"I cannot imagine it! I suppose I must have been, but I never remember being a child at all. I had no children to play with me--my father suspected all children of either disease or wickedness, and imagined I would catch infection of body or of soul by association with them. I was always alone--alone!--yet not lonely!" She broke off a moment, and her eyes grew dark with the intensity of her thought "No--never lonely! And the very earliest 'interval' of happiness I can recall was when I first saw the inside of a sun-ray!"